


By These Shackles I'm Bound

by m3aculpa



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Community: glee_angst_meme, Episode Related, Episode: s01e09 Wheels, Gen, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-29
Updated: 2010-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-24 15:30:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m3aculpa/pseuds/m3aculpa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somebody had faked to be wheelchair-bound to get a job. Who does something like that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	By These Shackles I'm Bound

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** By These Shackles I'm Bound  
>  **Fandom:** Glee **  
> Rating:** PG  
>  **Characters/Pairings:** Artie, Finn, Rachel, with minor Tina, Kurt, Mercedes and Santana  
>  **Warnings:** Spoilers for 1x9 "Wheels", Angst, language  
>  **Word count:** 1047  
>  **Prompt:** Written for [this](http://community.livejournal.com/glee_angst_meme/3065.html?thread=3172089) prompt at the [](http://glee-angst-meme.livejournal.com/profile)[**glee_angst_meme**](http://glee-angst-meme.livejournal.com/) : _So, we saw how Artie reacted when he found out Tina faked her stutter, right? Think he'd react much better to finding out Finn faked being wheelchair-bound to get a job?_  
>  **Summary** : Somebody had faked to be wheelchair-bound to get a job. Who does something like that?  
> 

In a way he feels he should be used to this. The hurt. The sadness. The disappointment. The ever-lasting question: why doesn’t anybody ever try to understand?  
   
He thought that nothing could be worse than Tina’s revelation. The one thing he thought they had in common (he thought she’d _understand_ ) and it turns out it was fake. He was sad, angry, disappointed, _hurt_. He wanted to hurt her back. Wanted to make her feel miserable. But he couldn’t really. He liked her too much.  
   
This makes him more angry than sad. No, angry is too tame a word; he is _furious_. He’d applied for a job and the manager had taken one look at his chair and scoffed. ‘Nice try, buddy,’ he’d said. ‘But another kid tried that one.’  
   
Turns out a kid from McKinley had come in one day with a friend, a very loud female friend, and insisted that the manager had to give him a job since he was in a wheelchair. The descriptions he’s given matches only two people and the timeline he mentally calculates gives him a lump in his throat. The week they did the Proud Mary number; the week when they all were supposed to start _understanding_ him.  
   
It is hard for him to get a job, because the chair does limit the work he can do. And in a town like Lima where ramps and handicap accessibility is more an exception than a rule it is even harder. It is hard to live with people slamming their bags into him as they walk by. It is hard to stand when people don’t look at him while they talk or when they just gawk at the chair without seeing him.  
   
Somehow matters are made even worse because it is _Finn_. Finn the quarter back. Finn who can run and shoot hoops and who had a choice to just _get_ out of the chair when it became an inconvenience. It angers him. Artie resents Finn for that choice. It makes him furious that Finn would do something like this. He thought that Finn liked him. Or that if he didn’t like him he’d at least respect him as his teammate. Maybe Finn’s too stupid to realise, but Rachel is many things but stupid. She is selfish, though.  
   
Their next glee practice, he runs over Finn’s feet with his chair deliberately. Then he backs over them and runs over them again since Finn’s too stunned to move them. Finn cries out in pain and jerks his feet away.  
   
“Dude, what the hell?” he asks with his mouth agape and definitely not understanding. “What’s wrong with you?”  
   
The anger and hurt which have been bubbling inside of him all since he first heard of it erupts.  
   
“What’s wrong with _me_?” he snaps. “What the hell is the matter with you? You pretended to be in a wheelchair to get a fucking job!”  
   
Rachel chimes up somewhere from the distance; “Aren’t you overreacting a little, Artie?”  
   
Nobody pays her any mind. Everybody instead focuses on Finn. Even Puck looks sort of appalled and shoots Finn dubious looks. Artie feels frustrated and hurt and resentful. He’s not even processed Rachel’s comment yet. But when he does it will sting.  
   
“Dude, that’s really lame,” Puck says. “And wrong.”  
   
Finn looks around himself and realises that everybody seems to be glaring at him. He crosses his arms defensively over his chest and exclaims:  
   
“Hey! I was only trying to get a job to help Quinn with her bills and stuff,” he jerks his head in Rachel’s direction. “It was Rachel’s idea.”  
   
It’s like a tennis match when everybody turns to Rachel. She squirms, for the first time, under their attention, or rather their scrutiny. She crosses her arms over her chests and responds in a small voice:  
   
“I just did it to help Finn and Quinn. He would never have gotten a job otherwise.  
   
Santana scoffs and looks up from polishing her nails, “No, you _did_ it to get into his pants. Show him how nice and caring you are. Don’t try to sound like you’re noble, Berry, because we all know that ain’t so.”  
   
Artie startles when somebody hangs over the back of his chair and hugs him from behind. He recognises Tina’s scent and squeezes her hand. Kurt sidles up beside him and squeezes his shoulder gently, while glaring at Rachel. Mercedes has her trademark pissed off look on her face; ‘bitch I’m gonna cut you’.  
   
“I applied for work there,” he says quietly, calmed by Tina’s presence for now. “The manager took one look at me and told me that somebody had already tried that. I had to get my disability permit for parking for him to even consider it. And all I kept thinking was; who does that? Who honestly pretends to be in a wheelchair for a job?”  
   
He folds his hands in his lap and stares down at them. He wants to slam his hands into his useless thighs. Instead he digs his fingers into the flesh. It is still surreal, even after eight years, to see this and not feel it.  
   
“And I could accept that you needed to do it for Quinn,” he says quietly. “Maybe I could. But you... I calculated the timeline…” It’s against the guy code to speak openly about his feelings, but he has to get it out, has to say something or he’ll drown or _scream_. “It was the week when we did Proud Mary. Three hours a day in a wheel chair. Realising what I go through every day…”  
   
He makes a motion to his friends to let go off him and they do. He doesn’t think that he can stay. He didn’t expect them to disappoint him in this way. He didn’t expect them to let him down. Not like this. He feels betrayed. Finn seemed to understand how difficult it was.  
   
He starts to wheel out of the room and pauses in the door. His face twists into a bitter smile that feels really out of place on his face.  
   
“The difference of course,” he says calmer, “is that you can get out of the chair whenever you want to and it doesn’t feel that bad for you. But I _can’t_.”   
 

  



End file.
